Happy couple are still in love after 60 years of marriage

Nina Swift

Although Jeanne and Roy lived just around the corner from each other, they didn’t know each other until their eyes met across a crowded dance floor at Harrogate’s Royal Hall.

Now, more than 60 years later Mr and Mrs Bradley are celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary, putting the secret of their successful marriage down to “love and respect”.

The happy couple on their wedding day.

The happy couple were both born in Harrogate. When they first met Jeanne, 83, lived on Franklin Road, and Roy, 85, lived just a stone’s throw away on Ashfield Road, Bilton.

Roy said: “We met like many people in those days at the weekly Saturday dance at the Royal Hall. A lot of us started our courting there.

“We realised we both lived really close to each other - it was meant to be.”

The couple were married at St Luke’s Church, Bilton, on April 2, 1956, where they had both been christened and confirmed. They spent their honeymoon touring North Wales in an old banger “that had seen better days”, laughed Roy,

“I was only getting four shillings a day and we had no money saved up, but we had a lovely time,” he said.

The pair got married while Roy, then aged 25, was carrying out his two years National Service in the RAF, which had been postponed while he trained to be a chartered electrical engineer. Jeanne trained and became a staff nurse at Harrogate General Hospital, where she worked for many years.

As a result of Roy’s National Service, the couple spent their first year of marriage living in Barry, South Wales, but have spent the rest of their lives together living in Harrogate and Knaresborough, where they have had a home since 1967.

Roy, who is a founder member of the Harrogate District Probus Club, eventually became the manager of the North Eastern Electricity Board for the Harrogate area, and after Roy retired in 1986, the couple became keen caravaners, enjoying touring holidays in the UK and abroad.

The couple, who have two daughters, Carolyn and Joanna, and five grandchildren, say their recipe for a happy marriage is love and respect and “a deaf aid that can be faulty at times”, they joked.

The pair celebrated their anniversary with close friends and were delighted to receive a card from the Queen. The celebrations will continue this weekend with their family.

Roy said: “We have been very lucky, we are happy, content, still in love and so proud of our daughters and their families.”